


lemon boy

by revoleotion



Category: Ao no Exorcist | Blue Exorcist
Genre: Character Study, Okumura Rin Needs a Hug, Songfic, Yukio needs a hug, aroace character, depressed character, it just exists somewhere, lemon boy - Freeform, mention of depression, some manga spoilers but I will not put this anywhere in the timeline, therapy is good actually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26898283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revoleotion/pseuds/revoleotion
Summary: Yukio finds a lemon-shaped demon inside his room that introduces itself as his "depression". His first reaction is to shoot it, naturally.(only that this doesn't work)(when does it ever work, really?)
Relationships: Okumura Rin & Okumura Yukio
Comments: 48
Kudos: 78





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> warnings for this chapter: mention and symptoms of depression, Yukio being an asshole as per usual, unhealthy coping mechanisms
> 
> (I read one book by Timothy Zahn and now I write things like "his voice holds anger". I'm sorry, I hate it too.)

Looking back he can’t remember when he first saw the demon. It must’ve appeared overnight because Yukio  _ does  _ remember waking up and looking straight into the unmoving, intense eyes of the creature. His first reaction had been to jump, hit his head on the top bunk and utter a curse that he’d never repeat in front of someone else. Fighting back a headache and more curse words, he had reached for the gun on his nightstand. Despite the pain and the sleepiness lingering at the back of his head, his fingers were still when he pointed the gun at the demon. He took a deep breath. 

Yukio had never been the person to hesitate when it came to shooting someone. No matter who it was. Even if it was family. The thought flashed through his brain and made his hand tremble, if only for a moment. Yukio suddenly grew painfully aware of the fact that he wasn’t wearing his glasses. The room blurred and he heard every single one of his shaky breaths echoing in his head. He slowly lowered the gun. 

The demon was still staring at him. Unfazed. If Yukio didn’t know better, he’d say it was curious. It was a yellow, round thing, with no visible arms or legs but a green sprout on top of its head. Like a lemon, although he wasn’t sure if that was the right picture. 

“What do you want?” he prompted, well aware of how useless this was. 

“I’m your depression,” the demon replied. 

It had a nice voice and Yukio hated that this was the first thing he noticed. He didn’t dare to let go of the gun but he used his free hand to rub his eyes. 

“Nice try, demon,” he then hissed. His voice didn’t hold half of the distrust and dislike he wanted to put in it but he was still tired and his headache didn’t make things easier. 

“I’m your depression.”

“So I’ve heard.” 

He gripped the gun tighter and got up, avoiding hitting the bed frame this time. His legs were still a little shaky when he made a few steps away from his bed. The demon followed him, now floating in the air right behind him. 

“What do you want?” Yukio repeated and noticed with a hint of relief that his voice was getting stronger. 

No reply, of course not. Whatever the demon had planned, it was not going to be nice. 

“Give me one reason not to shoot you.”

The demon just stared at him. Yukio felt a chill creeping down his back. What was he doing? He shouldn’t talk to a demon, he should get rid of it. Especially if it was one of the ones messing with his head.This one was, he was sure of it. Yukio could feel it. And if he were honest, he had felt it before the demon had first appeared, just not that intensely. 

He couldn’t risk running into problems because he was unable to perform his work. He took a deep breath, aimed and fired. 

Nothing happened. 

No, that wasn’t true. The projectile went straight through the demon and exploded at the edge of the top-bunk, right where Yukio had just hit his head. He winced when the splinters dared to attack him and decided to hold his breath until the smoke had disappeared. Thank God he hadn’t used any harmful bullets, he was experimenting with synthetic ones at the moment. 

“That is not going to work,” the demon informed him. 

“Well, no shit,” Yukio said loudly.

He flinched at the sound of steps in the hallway and turned around when someone tackled the door open. 

“Are you okay?” Rin asked. 

“Yes, I-” Yukio turned around but the demon had taken advantage of the situation and fled. A little voice at the back of his head whispered how ridiculous this situation was, how ridiculous he had to look, out of breath and pointing a gun at nothing. 

“Damn it,” Yukio said. “It got away.”

“Are you okay?” Rin repeated. 

He looked at Rin with enough rage in his expression to make his brother flinch. Rin kept looking at him, though, and when Yukio didn’t reply, he added, “Do you want to eat breakfast with me?”

“There’s a demon on the run and you want to eat breakfast?” Yukio hissed. 

Rin stayed where he was. If anything, his expression became more stubborn. 

“So what? I’m a demon. Our kitchen chef is a demon. If it didn’t do any damage so far, chances are that it will leave and that’s that.”

“And terrorize someone else?” Yukio asked. To be fair, the demon hadn’t done much yet. It had just stared at him and told him nonsense. Maybe it was gone for good. The headache was mostly gone, too, and Yukio was hungry. He had no reason to deny the offer but he really, really didn’t want to deal with Rin yet. Or anyone. This was his one free day, he didn’t have classwork to do and he hadn’t planned to perform any exorcism either. He didn’t feel like doing anything. 

“You’re not the only exorcist on campus. Someone’s going to find it. If it causes trouble, that is.”

“And if it doesn’t? Are we just supposed to let demons get away?”

Rin sucked in his lips, turning his face into some sort of smiley-face that didn’t amuse Yukio in the slightest. When he didn’t react, Rin tilted his head a little, a silent “are you serious?”. 

“Yeah, that’s what we are supposed to do, Yukio.”

“I disagree.”

“Of course you do.”

There wasn’t any bitterness in Rin’s face but it was all over his voice. Yukio gave him a smile in return that felt so fake that it physically hurt his face muscles. That’s how their fights went a lot nowadays. They were almost scripted, silent hostility. Rin’s patience was slowly wearing off and Yukio both awaited and dreaded the day he’d finally give in. He wanted it to happen. He wanted to be free, he wanted the guilt and pressure to be gone. 

“Eat breakfast with me,” Rin said. It almost sounded like he was begging. 

Yukio glanced at his desk, at the neatly stacked papers that he was going to grade tomorrow, at the two empty water bottles and the empty chicken nuggets container, the only trace left of his dinner from last night. 

“Fine,” he said. 

He hated that Rin’s smile was genuine. He hated that his brother waited in the hallway until Yukio was dressed, giving him no chance to escape. He hated that Rin did stupid smalltalk all the way down to the kitchen. He hated that Rin had already taken out Yukio’s favorite mug and filled it up with freshly made coffee while Yukio sat down. He hated that the kitchen was flooded with light and that the microwave made a sound while heating up the milk for his coffee. After a few antagonizing seconds, the loud beep indicated that the milk was done. Yukio ignored the urge to hide his face in his hands. 

The demon had to be somewhere in the dorm or, even worse, somewhere in the academy. The guilt had settled deep in Yukio’s bones, it had become muscle memory to feel it. If he had been better, more competent, nobody else would suffer from it. If he had known the correct way to defeat it… 

Rin sat down in front of him and put down the mug. Yukio squinted down on it, then pulled it closer and quickly let go of it when it burned his palm. 

“So, have you anything planned for today?” Rin asked.

“Something else.” 

“Huh?”

“Whatever you are going to ask me, I’m not interested.”

“I wanted to hang out with the others today,” Rin said, like he hadn’t caught Yukio’s tone. 

“Have fun.”

“No, actually, I thought maybe you want to join us.”

The headache was back and it threatened to suffocate him. He had no room for any other thoughts, the pain occupied every inch of his body. He heard Rin’s voice as he continued talking and he felt the coffee on his tongue as he took a first sip. None of this mattered. Yukio finished the coffee and whatever food Rin had prepared for the two of them, then he squeezed an apology out of his throat. 

“I’m going to tell the others you said Hi,” Rin said, at last. 

“Do that,” Yukio said in his politest tone. It tastes like something had just died in his mouth. 

He walked back up to his room and sat down on his bed. When he reached for the book on his nightstand, a manga he had long forgotten about and didn’t even care for in the first place, the demon was back. 

Yukio froze, fingers still gripping the manga. For a moment he was afraid he’d tear a hole into the pages. 

“Can I help you?” he whispered, mostly because talking quietly made him feel a little better. Also, he didn’t want anyone to hear him talking to a demon. 

The demon blinked. 

“Well, if you make up your mind, you know where to find me,” Yukio said. The manga had fingernail prints all over it when he finally let go of it. 

He must’ve fallen asleep at some point because when he opened his eyes, his room had heated up and the lightning was different. Yukio blinked, sat up and stared right into the face of the lemon-shaped demon. 

The word that escaped his lips was so bad that he felt like he had to go to church immediately to make up for it. 

“Just kill me if you want to do it so badly,” he said. 

The demon blinked. Yukio sighed. 

“Depression, you say?”

“Yes.” 

It was the first noise it had made in a while and Yukio wasn’t sure what to make out of the fact that it was a soothing sound. 

“How do I get rid of you?”

He hadn’t expected an answer but he still was annoyed when he didn’t get one. The demon kept hovering in the air, right in the middle of the room. 

“Can you,” Yukio started but stopped when he realized how stupid this was. He was not going to make the demon promise not to hurt anybody. They all did it at some point. Yukio was just waiting for the moment Rin snapped and gave Yukio a reason to end this whole thing. They had stopped who they were supposed to be years ago. 

It was for the best if they could just admit it. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for this chapter: mention of suicide and suicidal thoughts, mention of alcohol, Yukio being a manipulative little shit.  
> There are also spoilers for the manga, nothing specific and I think you only know what I'm talking about when you read that scene. (no tinder dates for Yukio in this one)

Rin came back right in time for dinner. Yukio hadn’t bothered to leave the dorm to get take-out, although he considered it when he saw that his brother had brought a friend. It was not that Yukio hated Shiemi. No, they had lived through several awkward stages of friendship and attraction, had done their part of figuring out their sexuality, and eventually had decided that some things were prettiest as a daydream. Yukio was her “what if?”. She was his “if only”. 

He made himself look presentable and sat down in the kitchen with them because sometimes pretending like nothing felt off was the best way to keep everything running. No matter his desire to escape, he still craved a sense of normality. Everything had to work, everything had to seem fine, even though he wasn’t sure what normal meant for this dorm. For this family. 

“Hi, Yukio!” Shiemi greeted him. 

He watched her as she continued her conversation with Rin about whatever nonsense they talked about nowadays. Rin laughed more with her than he did with Yukio, his sharp teeth twinkled every now and then, like he was some sort of star in the night sky. Maybe that’s what Shiemi saw in him, something bright and pretty, not a threat to whatever she had imagined her life to be. 

“How are you doing?” Shiemi asked him. He had missed the moment the conversation with Rin had ended, apparently, because Yukio felt his body tense at her sudden attention towards him. 

“Good, how about you?” he said, a lie that left him so effortlessly that he may almost believe it. He thought about the demon in his room, at least he hoped he had managed to lock it in. The intense eyes had stared at him until he had pulled the door shut. 

Chances were that this couldn't stop a demon, not if it really wanted to escape. But it had seemed to like Yukio as its victim, so he hoped that it would stick with him until he found a way to destroy it. 

“A little stressed but alright. Life keeps me busy,” she said. 

“I see,” Yukio heard himself say. His voice was stripped off any possible compassion. He had never truly cared for others and nowadays it was impossible to pretend. 

She smiled. Had she always been this pretty? Yukio could vaguely remember meeting her, when his loneliness had still felt normal, not like a side effect of his sexuality. He couldn’t explain it, not to Rin, not to anyone else. It wasn’t a matter of not feeling seen, or maybe it was. Perhaps it was the lingering taste of the word “sin” in his throat, right where the pain settled in whenever he got angry. Anger always left his throat aching, with the familiar feeling of unfairness. A paradox, feeling like you deserve every single bad thing in your life while growing heated with every inch of injustice. An unsupervised stove, threatening to set your apartment on fire. You had never bothered to replace the batteries of your fire alarm, so the explosion will be a surprise. You know it will happen. Why is it so difficult to turn off the stove, anyway? 

And who cared about a tiny stove when there’s a wildfire nearby? No, Yukio’s anger had never been relevant. Because it wasn’t deadly yet. To no one but himself, and even that was neglectable. 

He had been born with this loneliness, at least that’s what he likes to believe. He likes to believe that nothing could’ve changed his feelings. Because if people like him didn’t deserve loneliness, why did he experience it? 

Looking at her was too much. He turned his head to Rin, and maybe Rin did understand the question but ignored it. Yukio wanted to think that Rin was, at heart, a bad person too. He couldn’t deal with the thought that maybe Rin was perfect, maybe he was the best person Yukio had ever met and maybe Yukio had done him wrong ever since he had been old enough to think. 

“Almost done,” Rin said, at last. 

Yukio managed to find the energy for a smile. It was more exhausting not to smile, anyway. 

“This looks good,” Shiemi said, nodding towards whatever food Rin was preparing. She had somehow sensed that Yukio wasn’t going to say something, or maybe he had already been kicked out of what was supposed to be a Rin and Shiemi evening. 

Perhaps it was a date. 

Old guilt, mixed with the neverending feeling of not being ready, perhaps never being truly ready. She was so much better off with his brother, Yukio was smart enough to know that. 

“I want to go out,” he said. 

Rin’s head turned. For a moment, not long enough for Shiemi to notice but long enough to send a shiver down Yukio’s entire body, Rin’s expression was hostile. Yukio pulled his shoulders up, then realized that this defensive gesture would make him seem even more suspicious. He exhaled, lifted his chin a little, discarded the smile, made his face more serious. 

_Rin had never gotten over his suspicion, not with Mephisto’s so obvious hint. It had become obvious to Yukio that Rin was never going to stop asking questions. So, he had made him wait, he had reduced his expectations to nothing, and when Rin had finally dared to say, “I am not going to pressure you any longer, just tell me what you were doing and I won’t ask any more questions”, Yukio had looked him in the eyes. He had hated himself so much in this moment._

_“I tried to kill myself,” he had said._

_Rin had stared at him. A promise was a promise, especially for two brothers who had nothing else left. It had been satisfying to watch him crumble, to watch him almost surrender to his anger, to watch him getting so close to the point of hating Yukio. He had truly believed that this had been the day he could finally distance himself from Rin._

_And then Rin had done the one thing Yukio still didn’t understand. He had smiled._

_“I’m probably the last person you wanted to tell. Just you know, if you ever feel upset about anything, no matter how stupid, you can always come talk to me instead of… you know.”_

_Yukio’s hatred for himself had taken a sharp turn at this point and had redirected itself at Rin's soft, careful face. Of course Rin had prepared an answer for this._

This had happened before Yukio had moved into his own dorm room, or afterwards? He wasn’t sure anymore. Months had passed ever since this incident, and unlike every other thing in his life it hadn't faded into insignificance yet. It was still _there_ , an unfinished conversation. They'd have to finish one day. 

“Out,” Yukio said. “To celebrate my day off.”

“What a sweet idea!” Shiemi threw in, either oblivious or ignorant on purpose. She did this sometimes. She was smarter than she looked like. 

Rin's face was his face again, no trace of hostility. Perhaps Yukio had imagined it, perhaps Rin truly didn't hate anyone. Rin was the kind of person who could make Satan himself likable if he so desired. And for some reason he had decided to offer Yukio redemption, over and over again. 

“I don't want to disturb you two,” Yukio added, checked with Rin's face, happy to find at least a tiny bit of irritation in it. They were getting there. 

“Com'on, you could never. Where do you want to go?” Shiemi asked. Her voice was so sweet he could feel it sticking to his ears, numbing every other sound for a bit. 

“Out,” Yukio repeated himself. He wasn't sure if he could find another wording for it, even if he tried.

But this was Shiemi. She deserved more than his best. Especially after having seen his worst. 

“Maybe get something to drink,” he added with effort. 

Not alcohol, of course. He was sixteen after all. If he made it through summer and then survived the cold, uncomfortable fall days, he'd turn seventeen after Christmas. 

Shura used to say that he was allowed to drink alcohol in Germany now. It had been on her birthday card too, written with a pink gel pen and underlined with a sparkly, blue pen. They had visited Germany on a mission once, a country that seemed to work slower than Japan, in a way he wasn't fully able to explain. Quieter too, at least the city he had visited. And that had been the _former_ capital city, although he couldn't really see it. Everyone only talked about that classical music composer, statues littered all over the city. 

Anyway. 

He had declined the offer but sometimes he wished he hadn't. It was like smoking. Or one of the energy drinks Rin had in the afternoon right before a nap. Energy drinks didn't seem to work on demons. Or it was the ADHD, one of those things. But Yukio would be affected by this. Maybe energy drink or alcohol or a cigarette could free him from his own head for a bit, just for a few hours, before pushing him back into that prison cell. 

“I might call Shura,” he said. 

“But you're not leaving because of me, right?” Shiemi asked. 

Pretty. Too pretty. Yukio looked away, focused on the pot on the stove so he wouldn't have to deal with the hurt in her green eyes or the anger in Rin's. 

“No, please don't think that. It's not often that I have an evening to myself, so I might as well…” 

He trailed off but it was enough, apparently, because Shiemi chuckled. 

“You don't need an excuse to buy Boba,” she said. “We just don't want to make you feel unwelcome in your own dorm. Right, Rin?” 

Oh, this was funny. But Yukio couldn't laugh about it, not here, not now. He avoided Rin's eyes but nodded at Shiemi on his way out. 

He couldn't remember the last time he had felt welcome anywhere. 

The demon was sitting at his pillow when Yukio returned. It stared at him but didn't move, even when he let himself fall down right next to it. He reached for his phone, connected it to the charger and turned it on. Shura's number was still blocked because she hadn't stopped suggesting therapists he could go to. He had threatened to block her on his work phone too, no matter the consequences. 

Unblocking her felt odd but it was way better than spending the evening with Rin and his perhaps-girlfriend. He did not hate Shura. He had disliked her as a child, when he had assumed that she was wasting her time, her life. He hadn’t known about the curse back then. 

He clicked Shura’s number and made a point of staring straight into the demon’s eyes while he waited for her to pick up.

Nothing. He could hear Rin and Shiemi laughing downstairs. 

“It may be possible that I don’t have a single friend,” Yukio told the demon. 

No reply. But he didn’t expect one anyway. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a short chapter with probably the worst Chinese you will encounter anywhere, it's been so long since the last semester and at this point I feel like I can't do anything anymore. Also, I'm sorry for the slow updates, everything is so stressful.   
> But yey, I finally got to introduce my favorite blue exorcist character of all time!

“I never thought about it this way,” Liu said. His picture was lagging ever so slightly but his voice was very clear. Once again, Yukio wondered if he should get a new laptop. He had no issues writing reports and looking up things on the internet but video calls didn't work as well as they used to. It was the same issue he had with his phone, his personal one, the Nokia Rin referred to as the “stone” to make Yukio furious. Growing up he never had enough money to worry about things like keeping up with buying phones. Now he had an income of sorts but Yukio always prioritized food and clothing over technology he technically didn’t need. 

In fact, the work phone, the one he couldn’t choose himself, was probably the fanciest piece of technology he owned. They had switched from a Blackberry to iPhones recently, but Yukio didn’t use the phone for much. Someone had told him that all calls and using the internet were free and included with the work phone but Yukio had nobody to call during business trips anyway. He did make use of Google maps a lot, though, so that was that. 

“But it's Shura, so I wouldn't necessarily trust her,” the Taiwanese man added after a few minutes of silence. Not awkward silence, this didn’t happen with Liu. There was just silence, a pause between their next words, a moment to think. It was important for Yukio to be able to think before he spoke to the man because he still wanted to impress him. Keep up the lie, the reputation, the idea Liu had about the person Yukio was supposed to be. 

“You know, when you have lived as long as I have…” the man started. 

“You're in your twenties,” Yukio interrupted but he might as well say nothing. 

“One day, could be tomorrow, could be in a year, you will receive a USB drive with all the information you could possibly need. Everything. About everyone. Corrupt people, classified files, all that. On that USB.” 

“That's oddly specific,” Yukio said. 

“That's because I'm kidding,” Liu said deadpan. “There’s no guide to growing up. If you want to go to Germany and get drunk, nobody is going to stop you.”

“But it feels bad.”

Liu tilted his head back and laughed, sending a shiver down Yukio’s back. He stared at the man for a few seconds, his dyed hair, the way his ponytail rested on his chest. The video quality wasn’t good enough for Yukio to catch how Liu’s background looked like, so he was stuck staring at the man. 

“Okumura-Xiong,” Liu said after he had calmed down enough to talk again. It had taken Yukio a while to understand that the old Chinese word for brother didn’t exactly mean brother, Liu indicated that they were friends. Mutuals, at least. Yukio didn’t consider Liu his friend. If he knew about the thoughts rotting in Yukio’s brain, he’d never contact him again. Liu valued things in Yukio that Yukio couldn’t always keep up. That’s why the silences were important. Yukio had to pick the face he showed that man wisely. 

“If you feel bad about it, you shouldn’t do it. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

Only that things had never been that easy. Yukio glanced over the laptop screen and tried to keep a neutral expression as he caught a glimpse of the demon. It had been very quiet those last few days but it seemed to have grown a bit. It was about the size of Yukio’s head now. It didn’t show up when Yukio was with others, and he hadn’t tried mentioning it to Rin ever since that first morning. 

It was his secret for now, and as much as Yukio tried to hate it, it was comforting to have visible proof that something was wrong with him. That he was haunted. This demon belonged to  _ him _ , it was  _ his  _ depression. There was something wrong with Yukio, and for the first time he could point at something and say, “that’s it”. 

Liu turned away to something off-screen and yelled, “ _ Shi Yukio, a! _ ”

A pause, probably because the other person said something. 

“ _ Yinggai shuo yingyu, ta shi riben ren. _ ”

Yukio knew enough Chinese from his Duolingo lessons to be sure that Liu had just said he was Japanese and that this was the reason they were speaking English. He couldn’t hear the other person but after a few more verbal exchanges, Liu said, “ _ Hao, zhenzhu naicha, qu bing, ban tang. Xiexie! _ ”

“We have the same boba order,” Yukio commented. He hoped that his guess was right but Liu grinned and his expression softened enough for Yukio to wonder if he had been lying to himself and if he was very much able to like someone if that meant they’d look at him like this. But then the moment was over and Yukio felt disgusted at the thought of anyone liking him like this. 

“We invented that,” Liu said. “It’s ours.”

“I know.”

“Good.”

“You should join them. I don’t want to hold you back,” Yukio said. 

Liu tilted his head and opened his mouth like he wanted to say something. Instead, he grinned and shook his head. 

“What?” Yukio asked. 

“Solitude can be comforting but it also makes it easier to die alone,” Liu said. 

Yukio waited for a “just kidding” but didn’t get one. They just looked at each other, Liu’s expression unreadable. Yukio felt the anger blocking his throat. Liu didn’t know him. 

They said goodbye, or perhaps they didn’t, but eventually Yukio turned off the laptop and put it down on his desk again. 

“What does my depression have to say about that?” he asked the demon. 

“You pushed him away,” the demon supplied. 

“Good,” Yukio said, the same way Liu had been relieved about Yukio knowing that Bubble Tea had been invented in Taiwan. 

Liu wasn’t his friend. He wouldn’t understand. Yukio could never tell him about the demon in his room, not if he wanted to keep up the lie for a little bit longer. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> specific warnings for this chapter: mention of suicide attempts, a lot of aromantic self-projection, cursing, possible “the untamed” spoiler with no context

“Are you still obsessed with the ice thing?” Shura asked. She dragged out her words, like she was bored of the sentence before she could even finish it. “We should’ve gone for alcohol instead.”

Yukio shook his head. They were sitting on a bench right next to the boba store of his choice. Yukio didn’t care for the taste as much as the fact that it was almost always empty. Even now, in the afternoon, right before darkness would settle in, they were the only customers around. He had picked up the habit of tipping as much money as he could as a subtle request to never shut the store down. 

He had his fingers wrapped around his cup of boba, condensed water already dripping down and drenching his fingertips. Summer felt unbearable in the city, especially without air conditioning. Yukio put the cup down in his lap and wiped his hands on his pants. He hated the feeling of water on his fingertips, and on his face. Maybe this had nothing to do with his failed attempts at drowning but he was sure that those two things weren’t entirely unrelated. He couldn’t wait for summer to be over, winter allowed him to wear his favorite coats and he was safe from curious stares. 

“You’re no longer obsessed with ice in your tea?” Shura asked. “Thank God, I was getting sick of you complaining that there’s ice in your tea like it’s some sort of goddamn treason-” 

“No, I’m not allowed to drink yet. I think you know that.” He halfway thought about complaining about cursing but Shura had heard him do this enough times to call him a hypocrite over it.

“You’re allowed to drink in Germany-”

“Will you stop it?” Yukio hissed, a lot harsher than usual. “I don’t want to drink alcohol.”

“You don’t have to,” she said, a little gentler. For the first time this evening, Yukio dared to fully look at her. He didn’t get used to the shorter hair yet, although she warned him when he called her two weeks ago. It had taken them an eternity to find a day to meet. Shura had “retired from the exorcism business” for now, her words not his, but her schedule was still surprisingly full. 

_ “That’s what happens when you realize that you’re not going to die young,” she had told him during the call. He had nodded along, even though he could not relate to this feeling. There was a black hole where his past was, but the future was an abyss as well. He had said it himself months ago, hadn’t he? Looking into the void for too long makes you fall right into it.  _

_ “I have to see so many doctors. I think I haven’t been to the dentist in years,” Shura had continued with a chuckle that was there to lighten up the mood but had just prompted an eyebrow-raise from Yukio. Shura had laughed at his stubborn silence.  _

_ “Don’t you judge me, kid. You’ll see, when you’re older and have to do your own appointments, it’s not so easy.” _

It had been the second bad advice about adulthood in a month, coincidentally also from someone he didn’t  _ really _ consider a friend. And just like with Liu, Yukio hadn’t known how to take it. He had smiled, like he always did when he wasn’t sure how to respond. Even through his horrible webcam, she must’ve sensed the smile because she had changed the topic after this. 

It wasn’t even a smile anymore at this point. To Yukio it felt like a stop-sign his body produced before he could think about it. A warning, not to come any closer, that’s what Shiemi had called it months ago, when… 

“Do you want to come to my place? I promise you, I’m not going to make you drink or anything you don’t want to.” Shura asked. 

Yukio stared down on his cup. It wasn’t the alcohol he was worried about, even though she made it sound that way. Shura didn’t support underage drinking. She had every right to drink herself, so why would he judge her for this? Yukio took a sip of his tea and chewed on the tapioca pearls a lot longer than he had to. 

No, alcohol wasn’t the problem. Yukio knew that if they went to her place, she’d use it as an excuse to talk about therapy again. 

“I’m not going to talk about  _ that  _ either,” Shura said like she could guess what he was thinking. Her eyes were gentle when he looked at her again. 

“Promise?” Yukio asked. 

“Promise,” Shura answered. “No talking about therapy at my place.”

Yukio felt a loophole coming up but decided not to say anything. He was starved for interaction with someone he could call a friend. He needed the illusion to stay up, he needed to tell himself that he was fine, that things were fine like this. Maybe he could even like her, he thought, as Shura finished her tea and slam-dunked the cup into the closest trash can. 

No, that was stupid. He didn’t like her this way. He didn’t like  _ anyone  _ like that. Maybe he never had. 

He didn’t hate Shura. He had never hated her. The problem with Shura was that they had never truly been on the same wavelength, even before they started to be friends. It felt impossible to recover from all the assumptions he had made about her. Even when she had turned out to be cursed, even after her laziness had been revealed to stem from the fact that she could never see herself growing old, Yukio had still looked at her and felt disgusted. He still felt this way sometimes. 

He finished his drink, wiped his hands on his pants again and got up. 

“Oh you’re serious,” Shura said. “Cool.”

She fumbled for something in her neckline - Yukio stared at the ground and tried to ignore her - then pulled out a necklace with a couple of keys attached to it. It wasn’t the first time he had seen something like this but it took him a while to put the memory together. A chill crept down his back. He knew where he had seen this kind of necklace. Four keys on a copper chain. One for the job, one for the apartment, one for the parent’s house and one for…

Yukio couldn’t breathe. 

“You okay, kid?” Shura asked. It pulled him out of his panic immediately. Anger exploded in his stomach and throat but at least he could breathe again. 

“Don’t call me that.”

“Oh, now I’m not allowed to call you  _ kid _ anymore? First four-eyes and now that? What else am I supposed to call you?”

“My name,” Yukio said. 

“Not going to happen, sweetheart.”

Yukio looked at her, the freshly dyed hair, her excited eyes and the smile on her face. Shura was… better. They had never been on the same wavelength, sure, but now it felt like they had managed to grow away from each other even further. He had always believed that she was the bad influence. Yukio had convinced himself that if he hung around her for long enough, he’d copy her way of speaking or her tendency to drink on the job. She was talented, yes, but also bad for him. 

Or at least so he had thought. He had never considered that it may be the other way around. 

“So, I’m currently obsessed with this show and it’s really good but also insufferably long,” Shura rambled while opening up a door right next to the cafe. It didn’t matter where it normally led to, the key turned it into a portal to Shura’s new apartment. 

Yukio had never been there before but it felt like he knew this place. Shura let him enter first, then pulled the door shut behind them. The first thing Yukio noticed were the fairy lights. They were everywhere. The entire living room was full of them but Yukio also saw a garland in the small corner where Shura slept and in the kitchen next door. He halfway expected to find one in the bathroom as well. 

“Oh, this is funny,” she said. She spoke quieter now, probably not to disturb any neighbors. 

Yukio kneeled down to take his shoes off. Shura waited until he was done, then pointed to a small rack where she seemed to store her shoes. Yukio had never really cared for her shoe collection but it seemed to have tripled since the last time he met her. She really was preparing to stay alive, and for some reason it made him feel worse than he had felt when he had learnt about her curse. Maybe because this had been the first time he had been able to relate to her. He, too, had felt like his body didn’t belong to him only. That something else, someone else, had taken it away from him, and he was only a visitor. A visitor inside his own body. 

Of course he didn’t want her to suffer. But after she got better, he felt like he lost a chance of a friendship before it could even start. 

Shura took off her own shoes and tossed them onto the rack as well. 

“The first time a friend came over, they brought me the first set of lights. But apparently every single friend I have thought of the same gift to bring me, so that’s why…”

Yukio hadn’t even thought of buying her a gift for the new apartment. To be fair, none of his friends had ever moved, and nobody had gifted him fairy lights when him and Rin moved into the dorm. 

“I take it you expect lights from me as well,” he said quietly. 

“Actually, I could use a new mug,” Shura said. “But you don’t have to get me something, you’re a child.”

“I have a stable income,” Yukio said. 

She rolled her eyes but smiled at him. “We can turn them on if you want.”

“You don’t have to do it for me.”

“Are you worried about the electricity bill? I have, what did you say, a stable income.”

Yukio decided to just accept this. 

He sat down on the couch and watched her turning the lights on, one after another. It felt like she was living inside of a Christmas tree. Yukio was reminded of his birthday, of the wishful thinking that Christmas was being celebrated for him and Rin, and nobody else. Because he didn’t have any complaints, Shura turned on an episode of the show she was watching. To Yukio’s surprise the show was in Chinese but Shura turned on subtitles for him. 

“It’s my tenth rewatch,” she told him. “I don’t need subtitles at this point.”

“Are you learning this to flirt with Liu?” he asked in an attempt to tease her. 

“Sweetheart, have you looked at him?”

“We had a video call two weeks ag-”

“He’s gay.”

Yukio blinked. 

“Oh.”

“You didn’t notice? Oh, com’on. For starters, the hair.”

Yukio decided to stare at her television screen. Not the best moment to do so because the show decided to have a lot of unsuspected, graphic gore. Still, better than having to deal with his own obliviousness. 

“Why do you think he likes you so much? He thinks you’re a baby gay.”

“I’m not gay,” Yukio said quietly. “I’m not anything.”

“You’re not straight either.”

Yukio frowned and slowly turned to her again. The characters on screen were having a very touching moment now but he didn’t care for them anymore. 

“But I’m not gay,” he said. 

“And?” she asked. 

“Doesn’t it make me straight if I’m not gay?”

“No, it doesn’t! I’ll send you some articles about this, Christ, you’re young.”

Yukio looked back at the screen again. Someone had just showed up and did some magic with a flute. He had the feeling that someone was going to die any second. 

“What is it about?” he asked. 

“How do I explain this, exorcists in ancient China? Does that make sense?”

It must’ve made sense to someone, otherwise it hadn’t been produced, Yukio thought. He leaned back on the couch and squinted to read the subtitles. 

“I assume this flute is some kind of Aria technique,” he said after a couple of minutes. 

“You’re not supposed to analyze it like that,” Shura complained. “But yes, I thought that too.”

She turned to him and smiled. “I have pockys in the kitchen if you want some.”

“I’m good.”

Shura got up and grabbed some anyway. Yukio waited a couple of minutes, just to be polite, but as one of the characters was brutally strangled, he leaned closer and took one pocky. They were bright pink. 

“I liked that guy,” Shura said. “Oh, well.”

“You saw him die ten times by now,” Yukio commented. 

“And will you believe me when I tell you it won’t get any easier?”

Yukio grabbed another pocky. 

“I believe you,” he said. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shura's love for this show was shamelessly stolen from Kay (who introduced me into it!)  
> The episode I'm referencing is episode 20 but I'm not going to get into detail because... spoilers.
> 
> also, this chapter was supposed to be a lot longer but I'm leaving you with this tiny cliffhanger. Expect an update in three to twenty-seven business days.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> specific warnings for this chapter: character being triggered/dissociation, panic attacks, mention of suicide attempts (including one vague description)

Shura had convinced him to stay over, mostly because she had convinced him to watch a few more episodes and all of sudden it had been past midnight. Yukio hadn’t texted Rin that he was staying out, they usually had separate plans for the weekend anyway. Shura had offered him breakfast in the morning but Yukio had declined. He had watched her eat - toast with marmalade - but eventually had decided that it was time to go. 

Yukio refused to use a portal to return to his dorm. He must’ve returned home  _ some  _ way because the next thing he was fully aware of was that he was standing in the hallway. For a couple of minutes he just stood, the cold air conditioning in his face and the smell of the old building in his nose. His head was silent but that didn’t mean that he was calm. 

Or maybe he was, the calm before a storm. The calm before you notice the burning stove. The moment before you run. Right now, everything was quiet. Yukio stood, breathed in and out and looked around. Everything was familiar and yet it felt like he was seeing the details for the first time. He looked down on his hands and found them shaking. His fingers were still holding the latchkey, clutching it hard enough to stab through his skin but he didn’t feel the pain. 

_ The necklace.  _ He couldn’t stop thinking about the necklace. 

Yukio made a careful step and sighed with relief when he noticed that his legs were able to carry him to his room. He walked slowly, taking in his surroundings like he was just a visitor. Like he was in here for the first time. He couldn’t remember how he had felt when he entered this place for the first time. It must’ve been when he was seven but he hadn’t slept there back then. After his training was done for the day, he had returned home to keep up the illusion that demons don’t exist. He had eaten dinner with Rin and had listened to the newest fight his brother had gotten himself into. He had done his homework in the late evening, only the dimmed desk lamp keeping him company. 

His training had been different from how other students experienced it, how Rin was experiencing it right now. Yukio hadn’t grown up with friends, he hadn’t talked to classmates after school or had sleepovers at the dorm. He hadn’t gotten to form study groups for exams or joke about the teachers behind their back. Everyone else had been much older than him. Yukio had been alone. His life had been built around Rin ever since he could remember. Rin’s safety had always come first, everything had always been about Rin. 

And now? Now, Yukio was trapped inside his own head, only ever thinking about himself and his own failures. 

_ The keys.  _

Yukio chuckled and pressed a hand against his face to suppress the sound. It wasn’t even funny. Nothing was. Maybe that’s what made it funny. 

He made it to his room and checked twice if he locked the door properly before he made a step towards his desk. It was the first place he looked for comfort in because it provided the best distraction. All he had to do was get buried in work, that way he’d forget what he was thinking about. If he allowed the memory to fully reach him, it would suffocate him. Before he could sit down, a noise in the corner startled him. 

Yukio turned around, slowly, even though he knew exactly what he’d find in there. 

The demon had grown even further in size. The green sprout had grown two tiny leaves, making it look even more like a lemon instead of a demon. Yukio had never heard of a lemon demon before, chances were that this demon could change its appearance. He had no idea why it had picked this shape. Possibly to mock him. 

“I bet you’re enjoying this,” Yukio hissed. “Leave me alone.”

He walked to his desk, sat down and grabbed a pen. He had planned to grade a couple of tests after meeting Shura and he wasn’t going to let anything or anyone ruin his weekend plans. Not even a stupid demon that had decided to hang around and to plague him. Yukio knew how to deal with unwanted demons inside his room, he had lived together with Rin. 

He made it through two tests until the silence shifted. He felt the emptiness, the absence of  _ something. _ Yukio dropped the pen next to his papers and slowly turned the chair around. 

The demon was gone. Not just from the corner. It had  _ left. _

After weeks of tolerating its presence, of  _ living  _ with it, it had just left him. Yukio was supposed to be relieved. He should be relieved that it wasn’t his problem anymore, that another exorcist could find it and get rid of it. 

He wasn’t relieved. Yukio inhaled, pushed himself up and walked to his bed. He pulled the blanket up like he was still a child, like he was physically sick and just waiting for someone to bring him soup. 

But Rin didn’t come into his room anymore and he had locked the door anyway. 

“Come back,” he said. He didn’t sound like himself, he sounded manic, desperate, on the edge of a breakdown. Here he was, negotiating with a demon because he didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts. He didn’t want to be alone inside his head.

For a split second he wanted Satan back. 

The panic embraced him, held him tight and then strangled him right when he found comfort in it. Yukio forced air into his lungs until he felt like it was poisoning him. He squeezed his eyes shut, counted to ten and when he ripped them open again, he stared into the dark, unmoving eyes of the demon. 

“What the hell was that?” Yukio asked loudly. 

He wanted to laugh. He felt like he had just survived something he wasn’t supposed to survive. Yukio pushed the blanket down again and looked at the demon. The panic slowly left him, like the high tide slowly retreating from the beach. Instead of seashells and an occasional jellyfish, it revealed the memory Yukio was trying so hard to drown. 

But he couldn’t drown it. It was always going to come back, always going to be washed up on the shore again. 

“Can I tell you something?” he asked the demon. 

Not that he needed permission. The memory was going to emerge again, even if he suppressed it now. The demon tilted its head a little and blinked. 

Yukio took it as a Yes. 

“When I was fourteen, I met an exwire from the branch in Germany. Actually, she was working for the Taipei branch, that’s how we met. She had the same haircut as Shiemi, so I sat down next to her during a conference,” Yukio said. The words blurred together on his tongue until they became unrecognizable to him. The demon settled down on his blanket and stared at him, a signal that it was listening. Maybe it even understood what he was saying. 

“We didn’t talk a lot but I assumed I was going to like her if I just believed in myself. We went on two dates before I decided that I couldn’t do it. She was alright with it, maybe she believed I was gay or she hadn’t liked me in the first place. I didn’t hear much from her ever since but last summer we found out that she had jumped off the highest tower in Taipei. She kept this necklace with four keys on it, the fourth one was for the highest floor of that tower. I don’t even know where she got it.”

The demon made a small noise, not shock, just a small hum to indicate that it was still listening. Yukio didn’t want to continue but he knew, somehow he knew, that he’d never be judged by a demon. No matter what he’d say. Because he was human and that meant that he was better than any demon (or angel) he might encounter. 

“She didn't die, obviously,” Yukio said, although there was nothing obvious about it. “She changed her mind halfway down. Another exwire saw her falling and rescued her. She told me later that she had only noticed that she wanted to live when she was falling.”

Yukio closed his eyes. Something was burning behind his eyelids but it felt different from the blue flames. He was crying. 

“She said she was relieved when she was back on the ground. But whenever I- whenever I… I’m not relieved when it doesn’t work. I’m angry.”

The demon didn’t comfort him but it didn’t judge him either. It just looked at him. 

Yukio attempted to wipe his eyes but instead got fingerprints all over his glasses. Frustrated and mad at himself for crying, he yanked the glasses from his face. That way, he was practically blind but at least he could rub his face with his blanket. It took a couple of minutes for him to calm down but eventually he could breathe again and his face was dry. He put the dirty glasses back on; he didn’t feel safe enough walking without them ever since he had walked into a cupboard and had yelled a couple of very inappropriate words through the entire dorm. 

“I am going to clean my glasses,” he told the demon, not because he owed it an explanation but because it felt odd to just leave it alone in the middle of a conversation. 

Being polite to a demon. Yukio had never thought that this day may come. 

It was Sunday. Rin spent his Sundays avoiding his homework for Monday, and then he’d spend his Sunday nights in panic, trying to finish said homework. It was still too late for the intense, yet very inefficient, burst of motivation to set in, so Yukio hoped that Rin was still outside with friends. 

But when did he ever get what he wanted?

“You left your room!” Rin’s voice said when Yukio squeezed dish soap onto his glasses. He took his time cleaning the glasses and drying them off, then he put them back on and turned to his brother. 

“Well, not for you,” he said. 

“I thought so.”

There it was, the self-aware tone Yukio was so afraid of. 

He looked at Rin, whose blue eyes were curious and hurt, and he wondered if this was the moment they continued their conversation, the one buried at the back of his head that threatened to break free and set his face on fire again. But the confusion and the hurt vanished, got replaced by something cheerful Yukio hadn’t seen in weeks. Not because Rin wasn’t happy. Because Rin wasn’t happy around  _ him.  _

“Glad you’re better,” Rin said. 

Yukio had never truly felt seen. By anyone. It wasn’t the first time he thought this but the first time he understood what it meant. 

“Of course you are,” he said. “I’ll be back in my room.”

“Wait.”

Yukio’s legs started shaking. He froze in position and stared at Rin like he had just threatened him. Rin must’ve seen the fear in his face because he made a small step back and raised his hands like he was giving up a fight before it could even start. 

“Forget it,” he said. “You’re going to say No anyway.”

“To what?”

“I said forget it.”

It had finally happened. Yukio wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. 

Rin was finally done with him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, remember when I said I was leaving you with a cliffhanger last time? Oh well, how the tables have tabled. 
> 
> I wanted to thank you all for the sweet comments I got so far. I have a scrapbook with my favorite comments on ao3 and I have put so many of yours into this. (probably all of them, not going to lie)  
> see you in the next update!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writing this chapter made me realize that I use many metaphors with fire when it comes to Yukio’s rage and destructive behavior, but when it comes to suicidal tendencies, I mention water/drowning a lot. I expect you to send in analyses about this topic in two business days. I take comments and emails. /j
> 
> specific warnings: /

“What's your goal here?” Yukio asked the demon, eyes focused on the black screen of his computer. It had given up on him a couple of days ago but Yukio refused to buy a new one. He hated spending money, especially if he didn't have to. If he succeeded one day, if he set his powers free or ended up dead, he was not going to need a laptop. 

Besides, getting a new laptop was not that easy. He'd have to go out for that, or even worse, order the laptop and ask Rin to accept the package, just in case Yukio wasn't home when it arrived. Obviously, that was not going to happen. 

Looking at the dark screen, Yukio could not only see his reflection but also the demon next to him. It had picked up the habit of sitting on his desk or floating next to him like a semi-helpful stationary set. It would give him pens when he asked for them, and by now they had fallen into a routine Yukio didn't find unpleasant. No, he actually liked having something around, to distract him from the ones he was actively ignoring.

He hadn’t spoken with Rin the whole week. This felt like a new record. 

The demon blinked, all too visible on the dark screen. Yukio wasn't sure how much of his search history it was aware of. He had used his work phone to access the digital files on demonology, since his textbooks weren't helping in any way. He hadn't found much he didn't know already, but there had been one comment in one of the PDFs, hidden in a footnote, that mentioned _Faust: A Tragedy._ Yukio had read Faust, of course. His father had kept two old copies of the drama, part one and part two. The books had once been a nice color, Yukio supposed, but time had turned the pages yellow and had allowed the cover to fade into an ugly brown. He had spent about a month trying to make it through the prologue in heaven, a German dictionary and school work piling up next to him, then he had put the book away and read it in Japanese instead. 

For someone that had read and understood Faust at the ripe age of 11, Yukio had taken a long time to figure out that Mr. Pheles had named himself after the devil in this book. _A_ devil, Yukio reminded himself, the book hadn't classified Mephistopheles as the biblical devil, just a demon that had a bet with God going on. Perhaps it had been the fact that Yukio had attempted to read the prologue in heaven for weeks but it stuck to his memory like nothing else that had happened in his childhood. He felt like he could recite it from memory, even though he hadn’t touched the drama in years. Shiro Fujimoto’s old copies must’ve been destroyed in the fire, and if Yukio was honest, he didn’t feel like he deserved having them anyway. 

It felt like a part of him had died that day as well. The part of him that had read classical German literature for fun, the part of him that had tried to be helpful, that had accepted the path his adoptive father had put him on. And if the fire hadn’t killed it, doubt had. 

Yukio felt riddled with doubt. Not just the religious kind, he had understood very early that there were some very real aspects to almost every religion he had encountered, and everything that couldn’t be proven wasn’t Yukio’s concern. No, it was the doubt about his family, about growing up, about realizing that a man he had idolized hadn’t been perfect. Doubt had caused Yukio to start thinking that he deserved more. That his life could be more than protecting his brother. That he had a free will. 

He had been wrong, obviously. 

Touching anything Fujimoto had owned felt like sacrilege. So, all Yukio had left was his memory, as unreliable as it was at times. But he could trust some of the knowledge he had acquired in school, some of it stuck to his brain and refused to drown. 

The demonology book had moved on after the footnote but Yukio could fill in the rest for himself. He had never made a pact with the demon but he was sure that it hoped to gain something from his death. His _soul,_ like in the drama. Perhaps his body - that seemed to be a recurring theme, Yukio had thought and had grinned to himself. 

Whatever it was, it seemed to be linked to his death wish, since the demon had introduced itself as his _depression._ Of course Yukio wasn't depressed. Not officially. This was just a trick to lure him in. 

“I don't have a goal,” the demon said. 

Yukio rolled his eyes. 

“Let me make an educated guess, educated because I'm studying and teaching this stuff. You're waiting for me to die, so you can - I don't know - eat me. Am I correct?” 

He didn't get a reaction. 

“Well, why don't you kill me yourself, coward?” Yukio asked and turned his face to the demon. “Is that against the goddamn rules?” 

More silence. Yukio laughed, not a happy one but he couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed because he was happy anyway. Maybe it was funny to stray away from God like this, to finally fulfil his destiny of being a spawn of Satan. At times, Yukio felt like he was merely a _vessel_ for all the bad thoughts his brain could come up with. 

He inhaled and continued, “A pact? Is that how you do things? Next time I’m happy you get to kill me? _Augenblick, verweile doch?”_

The phrase must’ve triggered something because the demon suddenly stared at him with renewed interest. The giggle died on Yukio’s lips, the sudden silence clogged up the room and 

“I knew it,” Yukio whispered. “I _knew_ it!”

He sat up straighter, then hunched forward again, silent laughter on his lips. 

“I want to make a deal with you,” Yukio told the demon. 

* * *

He found it in his coat in the evening. It was his first mission in months, a smaller one, one to slowly get him back into the job after he was declared _unstable._ He had already walked down a few streets when he found it and pulled it out of his pocket. 

Yukio stared down on the small piece of paper and squinted when his eyes couldn’t make out the letters. To be fair, he hadn’t cleaned his glasses in weeks and the dirt and fingerprints on the glass had gotten so bad that he might see more without wearing the glasses at all. 

“She didn’t lie to me,” Yukio said to himself and crumbled the card with her therapist’s number between his fingers. He stuffed it back into his coat since there were no trash cans nearby. They still were very rare, although he had seen more of them here than in Taiwan. It didn’t bother him, he had grown up with bringing his own trash home and throwing it away in there. 

He could feel the crumbled paper between his fingers as he continued walking. 

“She didn’t _talk_ about it,” Yukio explained, even though there was nobody to listen to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Augenblick, verweile doch" is a reference to the drama Faust, I found an English translation of the lines on Wikipedia:
> 
> Faust. If the swift moment I entreat:  
> Tarry a while! You are so fair!  
> ___
> 
> this was a slower one, I'm very sorry for that! The next one will be a bit more heavy, I just read chapter 126 of the manga, and those from the writing server can attest that I did NOT have a good time.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> specific notes for this chapter: suicidal character, pact with a demon/demonic possession, making plans to die, misunderstandings

“I want to make a deal with you,” Yukio told the demon. 

It felt wrong but also right, like this was how everything was supposed to end and nothing, nothing could’ve prevented this. Yukio felt like his life had already been written out for him, all he had to do was to continue reading. If he read long enough, he’d stumble across the page where he’d talk to Rin. And if he went even further, he’d find his inevitable death. 

Either death or power. Both things were equally desirable inside Yukio’s brain, he had noticed that long ago but wasn’t ready to admit it. He didn’t care how it ended. Power or death. He could feel himself drowning in a rush of feelings, none of them distinguished enough to name. Maybe it didn’t matter. 

Maybe nothing mattered apart from that demon and those dark eyes and a whisper in Yukio’s ears that seemed to fuse with his inner voice, joined him, until he couldn’t tell where his own thoughts ended and the demon’s voice started. 

_ “Here’s how we are going to do this,” _ Yukio heard himself saying. Maybe he only thought it too. It made no difference.  _ “You get my… my soul, whatever you want from me. Under one condition. I get to pick the time. I want to choose when it happens.” _

The demon didn’t say anything but Yukio suddenly got aware of what it was trying to tell him. It was like it had taken over his head, and he was glad that it had done so. For the first time in ages, he relaxed. 

He wasn’t alone anymore, he thought, and frowned at the thought when he was done with it. Was that all Yukio was ever useful for? Being a host for a demon, a vessel, like it was never his mind that was supposed to inhabit his body. And he was glad about it, he was so glad to be able to lean back and let something, someone, else do the work. 

What Yukio felt was relief. 

It was so exhausting to exist, it was exhausting to live his life, it was exhausting to be him. Yukio had never truly noticed until he had given up responsibility, until he had decided to trust a demon, out of all beings. He let go and fell, drowned, waited for fear to take over but there wasn’t any. 

Maybe it was going to work. Finally. There was no turning back now, but Yukio was secretly sure that there had never been a chance to stop, a chance to think and to turn back to… what, the _ light?  _ A happy life? His life had never been happy to begin with. Like everything else, this had been determined from the start. There wasn’t a universe, a timeline, where Yukio didn’t feel like this. He was always going to feel this way. 

Unless there was a way out. Yukio was going to take it. He wanted everything to stop, one way or another. He didn’t want to think anymore. 

If this was the way he had to do it, if this was the means to finally reach an end - the end - he was going to accept it. Really, he had lived with a demon for so long. Yukio had stopped being a perfect or good exorcist long ago. He didn’t feel guilty for doing this. 

_ Do you want this? _

It felt like how Rin had described Kuro’s voice inside his head, although the lemon demon’s voice felt different from how Yukio assumed Kuro to sound. More soothing. Less like a cat, obviously. 

“I offered the pact, didn’t I?” Yukio asked. He was glad that his voice sounded like himself again. 

_ In case you change your mind, this pact cannot work.  _

Despite himself, Yukio laughed. 

“Noted,” he said. “I’m going to try my best not to change my mind about wanting to die.”

It lay out in the open, sarcastically yet honestly. In the following silence, Yukio found that he was calm. Calm enough to do something. To get up, to work. 

“At least I don’t have to buy a new computer now,” he told the demon. It didn’t respond but Yukio could’ve sworn that it was amused by this. 

* * *

That had happened two days ago. Yukio managed to survive the work, except that it didn’t feel like survival, it felt like he suddenly had been provided with energy he didn’t have in months. They worked together, for the lack of a better word. 

Yukio had provided the demon with a similar codeword like the one he had found in  _ Faust. _ No, that was a lie, he had taken the exact same one. You don’t spend years around Mr. Pheles without picking up on his… what,  _ catchphrase? _ To Yukio, the quote had always been a part of this man, part of the picture Yukio treasured (and loathed) of him. It felt only natural to follow this thread down to the very end. 

_ Verweile doch.  _ That was it. A relic from times where he had felt worthy of his own mind. Everything had started with it, the old books from Father Fujimoto, the hungry expression in Mr. Pheles eyes like Yukio was some kind of power to harvest (then, boredom, Yukio remembered, when Mr. Pheles had understood that Yukio was worth nothing). 

He wanted to do this right. It was kind of amusing, or it would’ve been if things could still be truly funny inside his brain. Nowadays, everything was hilarious because nothing was. Yukio didn’t know if the inevitability of his death made everything leading up to it more or less important. 

This was the thing about death, his death specifically. He had never expected to live for long, not as himself. He hadn’t expected to die either, he just didn’t see a possible future with him in it. He had always hoped to somehow lose his mind or to be okay with it, to finally be okay with being around his brother. 

Because if this was his only purpose in life, why did he hate it so much?

Death it was, then, and Yukio was going to make it good. 

But he had to do something about Rin. He was as sure about it as he was about the fact that he was going to die - it was either that or powers were going to awaken and finally make his brain go quiet for once. 

He felt… unfinished. Like all signs in the book pointed him towards Rin. With the knowledge, or hope, in mind that this time it was going to work, Yukio decided that he had to make things right, at least in the way he still could. 

He had wronged Rin. He couldn’t deny this. At some point, at some page, they were going to talk about this. And since Yukio was racing towards the end of his book, he had to do it  _ now. _ Because even if this didn’t end in death, even if he got powers and finally felt complete, Yukio wasn’t going to stay. It hadn’t been a conscious decision, more of an insight, knowledge that had always been there without him realizing it. It had jumped into place at the sight of Shura’s stupid fairy lights. 

Still, before he escaped, he had to fix things, at least a little bit. Yukio bought a mug on his way back home to the dorm. He wrapped it into an old newspaper, since he didn’t want to spend any money on wrapping paper he wasn’t going to need. On any other day, Yukio would’ve dreaded visiting her in person but he wasn’t too worried about her bringing up therapy or whatever show they had started together. 

If he didn’t know any better, he’d say he was happy to visit her. 

He put it off for later. The demon was generous, it seemed quieter these days but Yukio felt comfort knowing that it was inside his brain somewhere, ready to take over. He hadn’t wasted many thoughts on how this was going to work. If it was really going to  _ eat  _ him, the flames might fully destroy it before he could die. It had to make it quick before Yukio’s instincts kicked in, that was for sure. He was going to bring that up, once he was back in his room. The demon didn’t follow him around, not that he had expected it. It awaited him at his desk in the evening, or in the morning, depending on when he came home. He had put the broken computer away, so the demon took up most of his desk space now. 

It was going to be there when Yukio walked upstairs this night, and this was comforting, but Yukio had to do something else first. 

He had picked a convenient store to talk. This was protection for both of them, Rin wouldn’t willingly destroy the store that provided him with his favorite snacks and Yukio didn’t trust himself to do it in private either. He always said the wrong things in private. This didn’t mean that he hadn’t shot Rin in public yet, and he was going to do it again if he had to. No, it wasn’t about his actions, it was about his words,  _ poison, _ his instinct to destroy things beyond repair. Oh, how the tables had turned - or maybe there had never been change necessary, maybe it had always been like this. Maybe Yukio never had to be protected from Rin, after all. 

How was that saying? The worst creatures on earth are humans? 

Had he agreed with it back then? 

* * *

“You surely seem busy lately,” Rin said. He had bought onigiri and one large bottle of yakult, both already in his hands while he waited for Yukio to pay for his drink and his buns. Baozi, that’s what Liu called them, he had asked during the festival. 

It didn’t matter, really. Yukio smiled about it, anyway. 

“Is that bad?” he asked, just to watch Rin’s careful expression to grow more intense. 

“Ah-” his brother started, clearly uncomfortable. Yukio wondered when he had last been comfortable around Rin. Even worse, when Rin had stopped being comfortable around him. 

“I guess it’s bad if you don’t want to be,” Rin finally said after they had found a table to sit at. Yukio put down his food and took off his coat. Rin followed the movement with his eyes, and it took a second for the realization to sink in but then he relaxed visibly. Taking off his coat had always been a sign that he was going to stay, Yukio knew that and used it to his advantage. 

“I’d know how to tell them that I want to take a break,” Yukio said. “And they’ll listen to me. After all that…” He didn’t actually finish, mostly because he had no idea what part of his very embarrassing breakdown he was hinting at. 

“I get that,” Rin was quick to say.

“Thank you.”

“I think it’s great that they trust you again.” Rin teared his drink open and emptied it like a shot, as per usual ignoring the tiny straw they had given him for it. To be fair, this was the only valid way to drink yakult, Yukio agreed with him here. 

“I actually wanted to apologize,” Yukio said after Rin had put down the empty bottle. He figured it was best not to say anything surprising while his brother was still drinking, and judging by the look on Rin’s face it was for the best that he had been able to swallow his drink before he had to react to this. 

“Are you- Are you dying, Yukio?”

For a split-second, Yukio’s smile threatened to falter. He felt his eyes widen, just for a moment, but his lips didn’t give in. 

“What?” he asked. 

“You’re not sick, aren’t you? Is that it? You’d tell me if you were sick, right?”

“Yes,” Yukio said and grabbed one of the buns just to have something to do with his hands. This was not how the conversation was supposed to go. Rin shouldn’t be relieved that he was healthy, he wasn’t supposed to be that nice either. Yukio had finally gotten him to stop caring for him, hadn’t he? 

Then why the relieved grin on Rin’s face? What had he done wrong?

_ Do you want this? _

Yukio shook his head. 

Rin had the audacity to chuckle. 

“Alright, alright, continue. What are you apologizing for?”

“You can’t think of anything I might have to apologize for?”

Rin took his time to answer, which was a good sign. He took his time unwrapping the onigiri, carefully pulling at the plastic wrapping so the seaweed didn’t tear apart. It had taken him many unsuccessful tries to get this far, Yukio remembered, and he couldn’t help being a little proud when Rin held the intact onigiri between his fingers. 

“No,” Rin said. 

Yukio was very glad that he didn’t open his drink yet because he was convinced that he’d spit it all across the table right at this moment. 

“No?” he repeated. 

“No, not anything in particular,” Rin confirmed. “Why? Should there be?”

Yukio’s fingers started to tremble. He stuffed the bun into his mouth to distract himself from it but the words kept playing on loop inside his head. 

“I mean,” Rin continued while he was busy chewing his food, “Maybe there’s anything I don’t know about yet but I don’t really think… Am I missing something?”

“I shot you,” Yukio forced out, his mouth still full of baozi. 

Rin made a strange noise that he couldn’t place for a couple of seconds until he realized that his brother was laughing. 

“Your face! It’s all good, Yukio, that’s just… you do that, at this point I think that’s how you show affection.”

Yukio hated him. 

He hated the way Rin always knew what to say, how to handle things. How to laugh about something, how to  _ forgive  _ him. 

“Hey, Yukio, don’t look at me like that.”

Like what, he wanted to ask but instead he just smiled and finally opened his milk tea. Rin took this as an invitation to change the topic and started rambling about a mission him and his friends had been on. Yukio forced himself to listen while he sipped the milk tea. 

He wasn’t sure if he should be relieved or not. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not even sure if I remember Mephisto's catchphrase from the anime correctly, I watched the German dub ages ago and he kept quoting Faust? So, if that one is incorrect, I'll fix that!   
> I found a translation to "Verweile doch!" on Wikipedia, "Tarry a while!" but I never read Faust in English, so you're going to have to deal with my German quotes. Sorry!! Maybe some explanation for those who didn't have to read it in school:
> 
> Faust makes a deal with Mephisto that he only gets to die if he's truly happy. And in that moment of true happiness, he's supposed to say the magic words "Verweile doch! Du bist so schön!" and that's it. Mephisto gets his soul. Oh also, the whole thing only happened because Mephisto and God had a bet going on, similar to the story of Hiob in the Old Testament. I think that should explain most of it. Faust also is such a piece of shit?? Like honestly, I was 100% siding with Mephy in this one.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> specific warnings for this chapter: character experiencing a panic attack, threats of violence, suicidal thoughts (duh)

“Shiemi and a couple of other friends will come over for dinner later,” Rin told him right when Yukio put down his milk tea bottle. Apparently his brother had gone through a similar thought process when it came to preventing him from spitting out his drink, which could’ve made Yukio proud if he weren’t busy processing what his brother just said. 

Actually, this was perfect, he figured. 

“Would you want me to join?” Yukio asked, careful not to mess up the masking he had worked on for so long. He failed, or at least it seemed like this for a moment. Rin seemed painfully oblivious still, which might have been Yukio’s biggest advantage. 

“Wait, really?” Rin asked. 

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“You didn’t want to join us the last five times I asked.”

Fair, Yukio thought but only smiled. Rin took a deep breath and looked down on his nails. When did he start getting into nail polish? It looked nice on him but Yukio would never consider doing it himself. Rin was stronger than him in many ways, including his ability to ignore what everyone else thought of him. Yukio needed to be liked, he couldn’t stop thinking about what everyone around him might think about him at any given moment. Yukio couldn’t just paint his nails black like Rin did. 

His envy was a strange little flame at the back of his head, almost muscle memory at this point. Yukio always hated his brother in one way or another - not as much as himself, of course - but this was a more quiet, subtle type of it. It was not going to consume him all at once, it took little bits of him until Yukio had no idea anymore who he was, who he was trying to be, who he still could be. 

What was his life, if not a series of missed chances?

Maybe he should be brave enough to paint his nails. Maybe it didn’t matter if he did it or not. 

“I- uh. It’s not like we don’t want you there, it’s just…”

Rin must’ve seen the emotion that crossed Yukio’s face, even though he did his best to hide it. He had felt this before, he could even pinpoint the first time it had happened. It had been a stupid birthday party they had planned, not just for one birthday but also for all the birthdays they had ignored during the school year. Yukio had hated the idea. Because it had been a good one, because it had sparked the wish inside him to be, what, young again? He was younger than some of his students. It hadn’t been the wish to be younger, it had been the wish to belong. 

He had never belonged anywhere. Not once. He didn’t belong in his family, a fragile little failure, he didn’t belong with all the other teachers but he also didn’t belong with students his age. Of course he had taken the same classes Rin did, at a normal school, but even there he had felt out of place. He wasn’t even able to _love._

That cursed birthday party had been where it first happened, where the feeling had started slowly poisoning his brain. Yukio liked trying to find a moment in his life where everything went wrong, a moment he’d time travel to to fix everything. 

This was one of those moments. If he could go back in time and try again, he’d celebrate with them. He’d try to be one of them, even if it was just for this one damn afternoon. 

Unwanted. This was it. It’s a double-edged sword, to be free from every responsibility, to be free from social ties. To be disliked enough. 

“No, you know what? You’re my brother. If the others have a problem with you, they can leave.”

Rin smiled at him. The worst part was that he meant it. 

Something shattered inside of Yukio’s chest. He didn’t bother picking up the pieces. 

* * *

“A couple of other friends” apparently meant everyone Yukio had ever met. He could’ve sworn that he spotted Shura among the guests too, which meant that they were going to try to convince her to get alcohol. At least that’s what Yukio expected but he didn’t know enough about parties to be sure. Not that it felt like a party. If it was one, it clearly was a tamer version, colored by what Rin did to a room. Rin always made things nicer, somehow. It was the way he laughed, the way he talked to people with no effort, the way he cooked and asked how they liked it, the way he made sure everyone had a place to sit. 

He did everything right. Yukio hated it. 

He found himself on a couch Rin had dragged into the kitchen (“very sanitary,” Yukio had said when he watched him do that), pressed against the arm rest. Shiemi was sitting next to him and gestured wildly while she described the new plant she had bought last week. Rin looked over to him from time to time but Yukio made the effort to smile every time he felt the glowing eyes on him. Maybe he was enjoying himself. Maybe it wasn’t all pretend. 

Who could tell. Not him, certainly. 

“Rin, we have to get more plants for you,” Shiemi said. Yukio felt a pang of jealousy yet again when Rin made his way over to them. He didn’t want to be part of this conversation anymore. 

Yukio wiggled himself free, put down his plate and smiled at them. 

“I’ll be right back,” he said. 

“Your milk tea is in the fridge,” Rin said absentmindedly. Yukio nodded, determined to ignore how happy he was that Rin had remembered stocking up on those. 

He walked over to the fridge, opened it and stared at the bottles for a couple of minutes. 

“If you want to let cold air in, you could open a window, you know?”

Yukio flinched, slammed the door shut without taking anything and turned around to face Shima, Renzo. Something told him that he hadn’t started a conversation just for smalltalk but Yukio was not going to make it easy for him. 

“How could I forget,” he said sarcastically and smiled a smile that didn’t match his tone. Shima didn’t seem to mind. 

“Ah, yes. Inventive.”

“Thank you.”

They stared at each other for something that felt both longer and shorter than it actually was. Yukio decided that he didn’t owe Shima anything and that he had missed his opportunity to grab a drink, so he made a step back towards the couch. In his mind, the couch resembled safety. Rin was there. If he made it to the couch, he could escape Shima, the way he smiled and the way he knew more than he should. 

Shima didn’t let him get this far. Yukio willed the demon inside his head to be silent when an arm reached out and fingernails dug into Yukio’s sleeve, right at his wrist. Every noise was drowned out by his heartbeat. He knew that Shima said something but Yukio couldn’t make it out over the static in his ears. 

“What?” he forced out. 

There was a pause. Shima tilted his head like he had to be sure that Yukio didn’t understand him the first time. Eventually, he looked down on Yukio’s wrist and grinned. Yukio didn’t like how helpless he felt, just because a boy was touching him. 

“Do you know that you’re cursed?” Shima repeated, a hint of a smile on his lips that did very little to calm Yukio down. He pulled at his arm, only once, but the grip seemed to tighten. 

_Do you want this?_

“I’m not cursed,” Yukio said when he realized that Rin’s friend was not going to let go anytime soon. Maybe he should’ve paid more attention to Shima. Maybe he could’ve liked him in a way he didn’t have to understand yet. 

“Com’on, I don’t mean _that.”_

Shima waved with his free hand, like being Satan’s offspring was just a tiny inconvenience in the grand scheme of things. If only it could be like that. Yukio had believed it for the longest time. 

Now he believed that nothing could’ve stopped him from ending here in this exact moment, Shima’s fingers tightly wrapped around his wrist, firm, yes, but also gentle, in a way that Yukio had never been touched his entire life. Nobody had ever looked at him and then beyond. Nobody had ever looked through him. 

If only Shima could’ve taken a look earlier. 

He seemed to think the same thing because his eyes widened and he shook his head ever so slightly. 

“You know.”

It was only a whisper, and if Yukio didn’t know better, he’d say that Shima was disappointed. About what? That he hadn’t revealed the grand secret, that he hadn’t been the one to tell Yukio that he was going to die?

“Tell me, did you make that decision before or after you found out that Rin was going to move out?”

They say that when you die, your life flashes before your eyes. Yukio felt something very similar, even though he was very sure that he wasn’t dying yet. He hadn’t said the magic words. Time seemed… off, for a reason, not the way a demon could’ve done it. Yukio found himself trapped inside his body, a body that all of sudden seemed too small for him. His skin tickled where he was trying to expand, but he was trapped inside a cage made out of skin too small for him. He inhaled but there wasn’t any air for him to breathe. Time suffocated him. 

He didn’t feel Shima’s fingers anymore. He was alone, so, so lonely. 

After antagonizing seconds that made him feel like someone had set his lungs on fire, he noticed that Shima was saying his name. His first name. Like he had reached into a dimension where they were friends and swapped it with this one. 

Yukio found himself back in a body that fit him, from one moment to the next. He took a couple of deep breaths before he allowed his eyes to take Shima in. All of him. 

Because Yukio could look at him, through him, as well. 

He saw someone that could’ve been his friend. That’s a painful thing to see, maybe it was the worst way to ever look at someone. So much pain in the word “could’ve” alone. 

“Are you okay?” Shima asked. 

“Get away from me before I murder you,” Yukio said. “I promise you, I no longer have any reservations regarding threatening a student.”

“Of course you don’t,” Shima said, cheerfully. 

But he left. 

Yukio’s lungs hurt. He took a few more deep breaths and reached for his phone. It didn’t take her long to get the message. Shura’s head resurfaced from the crowd, she waved at him and pointed at the door. Yukio nodded, stuffed his phone back into his pocket and followed her. 

“Are you okay?” she asked him once they had reached his room. It was empty, of course it was, and Yukio tried not to feel weird when Shura sat down on his bed, right at the spot where the demon used to hover when they were alone. 

“Did you have a fight?” she asked. There was a hint of a smile to her voice, mostly shut out by worry. Of course. Yukio had never been the one to get into fights, he had thrown his fair share of tantrums when he had lost a training fight against her. But ever since that breakdown, everyone trusted him with a lot more violence. Which, of course, he was capable of. 

Yukio considered her question but shook his head. 

“I have a mug for you,” he said when Shura kept looking at him. He owed her an explanation, a little white lie at least. After all she had taken him out of there without a single complaint. God knew what conversation he had just stolen her out of. 

“A mug? Why th- I was joking, ki- Yukio.”

“I still got you one. Do you want it or not?”

Her face softened and she let her fingers run through her hair, just to notice that it was too short to play with it now. The gesture was so familiar and painful that Yukio had to look away. 

“I want it. Thank you.”

He reached for the present on his nightstand, still wrapped in newspaper. He had slapped a couple of stickers on it but that didn’t help much. It still felt less than adequate. Shura didn’t seem to mind, she weighed the present in her hands for a few seconds before tearing apart the newspaper. 

“Ah that’s-”

“Penguins,” Yukio interrupted her. “Because I like them.”

Shura traced the tiny penguin patterns with her fingertips. 

“Now every time I have my morning coffee, I can think of that annoying kid that I used to beat at training fights.”

“It’s not impressive to win against someone ten years younger than you,” Yukio said. 

“No,” she replied, voice suddenly melancholic, “I guess not. Thank you, kid.”

He didn’t correct her on the nickname.


End file.
